Wikimedia Foundation responds to Fox News

Today Fox News published a story that irresponsibly smeared the Wikimedia projects and a member of the Wikimedia Foundation’s staff, Erik Moeller. The story repeats serious falsehoods and offers information taken grossly out of context, resulting in what amounts to a deliberate misrepresentation of reality. Wikipedia is highly visible, and not uncontroversial. The Wikimedia Foundation wants to provide an environment in which staff and editors can do their work free of harassment and slander. The Wikimedia Foundation is appalled and angry that Erik’s employment with us has resulted in him becoming a target, and we believe that recklessly maligning him

Today Fox News published a story that irresponsibly smeared the Wikimedia projects and a member of the Wikimedia Foundation’s staff, Erik Moeller. The story repeats serious falsehoods and offers information taken grossly out of context, resulting in what amounts to a deliberate misrepresentation of reality.

Wikipedia is highly visible, and not uncontroversial. The Wikimedia Foundation wants to provide an environment in which staff and editors can do their work free of harassment and slander. The Wikimedia Foundation is appalled and angry that Erik’s employment with us has resulted in him becoming a target, and we believe that recklessly maligning him is indefensible. Erik is a principled and valued employee: we are proud to support him.

On the topic of allegedly illegal materials on Wikipedia and our projects: The Wikimedia Foundation obeys the law. In the weeks since Sanger’s published allegations, the Wikimedia Foundation has not been contacted by the FBI or any other law-enforcement agency with regard to allegedly illegal content on any Wikimedia projects. Our community of volunteer editors takes action to remove illegal material when such material is brought to its attention. The Wikimedia Foundation is proud of the Wikimedia editors who zealously work to keep the projects free of illegal material. If and when we are informed by law enforcement agencies of illegal content that has not already been removed through self-policing, we will take quick action to delete it.

12 Comments on Wikimedia Foundation responds to Fox News

I read the article, and it looks more like it’s Mr. Sanger that needs to be sued for libel, especially if he never actually complained to the FBI. It sounds like yet another “man on a mission” seeking to get Wikipedia webfiltered. And probably yet another to have minimal impact; most schools and corporations do not block the site despite so many similar attempts, such as http://wikipediaocd.wordpress.com/.

I am a full supporter of Wikimedia and Wikipedia. That being said, Fox News basically stated that there is a lot of graphic content on wikipedia, which is true. It also stated that Wikimedia is taking action to clean it all up, which I think is appropriate and NECESSARY. Too bad you couldn’t think of it earlier so the media wouldn’t have to publish it…

I cannot believe that it’s taken the best part of a month for this to end up in the mainstream press.

It’s clear that the images at categories lolicon and pedophilia were not child porn. Non explicit drawings that border on parody. No one really considers this child porn, Sanger probably doesn’t.

What Sanger has done, is to abuse his hand-me-down authority of being Wikipedia co-founder to publicise his entirely child friendly video site. Prior to this, no one had heard of watchknow, now thousands have.

“The Wikimedia Foundation obeys the law.” The laws of which country or countries? The laws of the country in which Wikimedia is located, the laws of the country in which the Wikimedia servers are located, or the laws of the country in which the reader is located? How would, for example, this image from Wikimedia Commons be treated under those laws?

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